


fall to rise with stardust in our eyes

by meliebee



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Found Family, Gen, adding some closure, making it a bit gayer and a bit softer, no beta or editing because as per usual we die like men, not kylo ren friendly, soft domesticity interspersed with introspection and post-wartime angst, stormpilot is also implied to a v v high extent, the ot3 is implied but HEAVILY, this is not the fic for reylos so begone reylos, trying to make sense of the low-key dumpster fire that was the trilogy, uhh most characters make lil cameos but the main ones are tagged, vaguely feminist undertones, very lazily plugging some plot holes, yknow just doing the lord's work!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22157377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliebee/pseuds/meliebee
Summary: Finn and Poe reach as one to steady her, Poe’s arm around her waist, Finn’s fingers on her shoulders. They anchor each other in the waves of the battle’s aftermath, standing steady only because they stand together.(Rey remembers Luke talking about balance, Leia talking about life forces, remembers saying she would not be the last Jedi, that she refused, that she rejected a world where she was left alone.)(Nothing is easy, in the aftermath.)
Relationships: Chewbacca & Rey, Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Rey (Star Wars) & Everyone
Comments: 12
Kudos: 168





	fall to rise with stardust in our eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many thoughts about tros and this is pretty rough and ooc, but I wrote it anyway so bon appetite kids !! pls enjoy
> 
> (i said this wasn't kylo friendly and IT'S NOT but also i was SO MUCH NICER to him than i wanted to be and i hope y'all appreciate that lmao so like,, if ur not gonna bully me in the comments go ahead)

It’s a strange sort of victory.

Finn is taking choked, gasping breaths beside her ears, his arms tight around her, and her hand is hooked onto Poe’s elbow to encircle Finn between them, Poe taking deep breaths and humming so lowly and softly that Rey wonders if he’s really making the noise at all, her arms keeping both of their necks safe and protected. Around them, the Resistance explodes over and over again as people collide into each other and release shouts of exultation and pride.

“We did it, we did it, oh my god,” Finn is chanting like a mantra, overjoyed and weepy but never disbelieving because of all of them, Finn was always the most devoted to hope. They anchor each other in the waves of the battle’s aftermath, standing steady only because they stand together.

As soon as one of them steps back—Poe, and only after long minutes of holding each other tight—Rey staggers.

It’s like she forgets that gravity exists, and that she is an island on her own— but no, Finn and Poe reach as one to steady her, Poe’s arm around her waist, Finn’s fingers on her shoulders.

Finn raises a hand to Rey’s forehead and his fingers come back red—Rey hadn’t realised she was bleeding. Poe quirks his eyebrows in question, tilting his head like BB-8 does, and Rey shrugs and shakes her head. She doesn’t want to explain and for now they leave her be. Finn’s cheeks are wet. He leans forward and touches his forehead to Rey’s, to Poe’s, all three of them connected and smiling, weariness so ingrained into their skeletons that they aren’t yet comfortable with accepting victory.

She misses Leia. She misses Luke. She even misses, in a less genuine and more theoretical way, Ben. She hadn’t realised how lonely it would feel, once everything was finished. She remembers Luke talking about balance, Leia talking about life forces, remembers saying she would not be the last Jedi, that she refused, that she rejected a world where she was left alone.

Rey hadn’t realised she would be able to feel the difference, the fact that she’s the only one left, but she can, and she does.

*

“Did you love him?” Says Poe, like it’s not a question— like a challenge, painted red and screaming.

It’s a few hours later and Finn is checking on Jannah while Rey sits to steady her tilting head, and when she said _Kylo was dead_ to the soldiers Poe could tell she didn’t match their enthusiasm. He can always tell, even when she pretends he’s wrong, or when he pretends he can’t.

“No,” says Rey. She didn’t love Kylo. But she couldn’t hate him completely, either. Not like Poe can.

“Are you sure?” Asks Poe, eying her. He’s angry and confused, and he’s still hurting, but he isn’t meaning to hurt her and he isn’t.

“He hurt me too,” says Rey, after a long moment, “in the same way he hurt you. Only I never got him out of my head because he was always _there_ , never leaving me alone.” She doesn’t mean to sound as small as she does, nor as weary. “It was—the force, maybe, Luke said, and then Palpatine—I don’t know. I _don’t_.” Her explanation is jilted and senseless but Rey doesn’t _have_ anything better.

She doesn’t know why she can’t just hate Ben. He’s dead, now, and he was a half of her presence in the force, and it all just… she doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t know how to reconcile the monster who killed millions with the man who brought her back from the dead. She doesn’t forgive him, but he’s _dead_.

“Oh,” says Poe quietly, almost sorry.

“And,” says Rey, suddenly desperate for him to hear her. “And when you’re alone for a really long time. When you don’t know love. It’s hard to know that love and not being alone aren’t the same.”

Poe reaches out and his fingers find hers, lace together, intertwine so he can pull her hand close. She squeezes back and his forehead butts against her fingers lightly, curls hiding his eyes when his head bows.

It’s an apology, a sign of solidarity, a _nevermind_. It’s not understanding but it is. Rey lets him hold her hand and she thinks about the way Kylo called her _nothing_ and _no one_ and the way he smiled at her through their connection right before everything came to its crescendo.

She swallows a sigh and lets Poe hold her hand to keep her close and she wonders at the silence of her own mind.

*

Four days after Exegol, Rey stands in front of the Resistance and lights a flame. Poe and Finn stand at her sides, with Rose and Chewbacca and Lando just behind them, and the overwhelming grief pouring out from the beings in front of her in so strong that Rey almost staggers under it.

The flame she lights sets off a firework, which shoots straight into the dusky sky and implodes into a silver shower above them. Nobody cheers.

“Today we honour our fallen,” Poe calls out across the crowd. “Those who fought and died for us will never be forgotten, not while we still breathe free air.”

 _“May they rest in peace,”_ intones the audience, the words rippling across the crowd and said in hundreds of different tongues. _“They will not be forgotten.”_

There are so few universal constants, but this is one: no matter how beings grieve, the dead are deserving of respect. Individual families, tribes, species and races will perform their own rites and rituals for those they lost, but here and now the Resistance mourns the cost of victory all together.

(The following ceremonies will be dark and dull, bright and loud, full of dancing and cheer or wailing and silence, burned by fire or entombed in the ground, but for each and every lost member of the Resistance there will be acknowledgment. Poe has insisted upon it.)

Poe raises his fist high in the air and the movement emerges like a wave among those who stand before them. Six more fireworks are lit, shooting up into the clouds and then raining colourful, shimmering light down upon Rey’s upturned cheeks.

Finn stands tall beside Rey, the line of his back straight and unbroken. Upon his chest are pinned General’s medals, which Poe also carries alongside pilot’s decorations to honour his fallen troops and friends, his face wet from tears but his shoulders refusing to shake.

Rey extends her hands and exhales deeply. _Thank you_ , she thinks. _Be at peace._

To herself, she wonders: _how do we possibly keep peace in a galaxy which has so often slipped from it? How can we be better at it than those who came before us? How do we keep these losses from being fruitless? When will the next Ben Solo emerge from our won war?_

*

Poe is not the same as them. He had a childhood of kisses and hugs and handholding, exploration and security. Rey's childhood was employment, sun-sick and starved. Finn's childhood was not a childhood, bruised and loveless. Both were so lonely, and never once does Poe scorn their newness, and for this they love him all the more. 

Back when everything began, when Finn and Rey were still fresh to the fight and still so unused to the existence of a wider world, Poe was the one who so often explained things to them in the little time they had for exploration, a task he took upon himself. It was Poe who glowered at anyone who stared at the way Rey ate like a wild thing, but also Poe who introduced her to second helpings and led her along hallways so she could see that any leftover food was not thrown away but instead repurposed or given to those who needed it.

Poe was the first to show Finn a gentle touch, to show him that contact did not have to mean pain, and that gentleness was neither something to fear nor to avoid. And as Finn grew more confident, grew more decisive, Poe never once turned away Finn’s tactile greetings and reassurances, allowed Finn to give as many hugs and cheek kisses and shoulder pats as he pleased. 

Poe is the one who they tell things about their earlier lives, though Rey doesn’t share much and Finn tends to avoid his past with an unflinching determination—he holds them tight in his arms and says things like _that wasn’t right_ and _I’m sorry that happened_ and _things are different now._ Every time Finn shares a detail of stormtrooper life, which happens more often as the Resistance begins making plans to liberate training centres and rescue the little ones and the soldiers alike, Poe’s jaw goes tight with anger, his face sometimes going sickly white or flushing incensed red.

Poe is also the one who, a few days after the final battles, puts down his tray of food and says, “Do you want to move in with me?”

Finn shoots Rey a quick, startled look, and then look back at Poe—Poe lets him mull over the idea and waits for the questions with an easy patience he’s never had to learn for them. “Why?” Finn doesn’t mean for the question to be so blunt, and winces after he asks it, Rey can feel his cringe in the Force, but Poe doesn’t seem to mind. He never does, with Finn, as though he’s got a bottomless well of love and patience inside of him and it belongs to Finn (and Rey) alone.

He shrugs. “Well I thought it would be a good idea since everyone’s bunking together—the refugees and the defecting troopers need a lot of space. Plus the—the general’s quarters are pretty big, too big for just me, and Finn you’re a general too but there’s only the one quarters so it’s only fair.” He pauses. “It’s just a thought—we don’t have to.”

Finn beams, his cheeks darker than they were a moment ago, his smile pleased and a little shy. “No, that’s—that’d be nice. Thanks.” Poe meets his smile and his grin grows, and Rey watches them both, sees the affection and the gentle brightness between them blossom into something tentative and glowing.

“What about you, Rey? You in, sunshine?” She jumps a bit, surprised, when Poe turns his attention to her.

Rey sleeps in a room with a few other pilots, and when she has nightmares and wakes sweaty and disorientated sometimes one or two of them will make mumbled shushing sounds to reassure her back into sleep. It’s still more care than she expects from anyone.

Most nights, she leaves early, trying to escape the shadows that waver at the edges of her vision, and makes her way to the engines or the training course or outside, where she stares at the stars and tries to meditate and tries not think about Jakku or Palpatine or Ben or anything else at all.

Rey pushes a smile onto her lips. “I’m fine where I am, but thank you.” Finn’s face falls, and Poe frowns, but Rey keeps her smile and excuses herself from the meal.

She finds her way to Rose, who’s been spearheading most of the practical Resistance work and who Rey likes to spend afternoons tinkering at machines with, listening to Rose chatter about her day or her job or Poe’s friend Zorii, who seems to be sticking around for Rose and Rose alone.

Heart still thrumming, Rey begs for something—anything—to do, and thinks about the way that Poe and Finn look at each other, and she’s sure that Poe only offered his room to her out of sympathy and courtesy but just for a few minutes she lets herself wonder what it would be like, to finish a long day and go to a home where Finn and Poe are waiting.

“Rey, over here!” Someone calls out for her, and Rey shakes her head to brush the thoughts away. The last thing she wants is to jeopardise whatever is growing between the two people dearest to her, and she can’t quite convince herself that Jedi and Sith don’t taint whatever grows close to them.

*

There is a wound that Rey carries. She thinks it is located somewhere inside, on the lining of her soul. It’s a mark upon her heart, scar tissue that makes her head fuzzy and her fingers shake.

Palpatine _took_ from her that day. When he took Ben and the bond Rey shared with him—the bond that Rey needed to understand the Force, the bond that taught her, the bond Rey hated and could not escape and never ever wanted—her grandfather broke something inside Rey and it will never heal. Not like it was. She can feel it, knows it in her bones and the whorls of her fingertips which ache after long days.

If Leia was alive, she would call it grief, would name it anger, and would teach Rey to overcome it. If Luke was alive, he would hold Rey’s hand in his metal one and tell her a story about his father and an emperor’s lighting and a nephew’s rage, would open his mind to her and let her see all of his own force wounds in their gnarled and knotted age. If Han was alive, he would bestow upon Rey a gentle touch, gruff voice turned soft, gifting comfort in place of an explanation because the force works in mysterious ways, after all, and people can’t be expected to use power so recklessly without breaking a few things along the way.

But Leia and Luke and Han are all dead, all gone, and when Rey lies on her cot at night staring at the ceiling sometimes her grief presses down on her like concrete, a wave of mourning that threatens to fill her lungs and bubble out of her mouth or eyes if she moves even a muscle.

Chewbacca lifts his arm when Rey approaches him where he’s leaning against a ship, mournfully watching the hustle and bustle of the Resistance. Rey slips under his arm and lets herself lean into the warmth of his chest. He asks how she’s doing, and Rey shrugs.

Chewbacca holds her tighter, grumbling a quiet acknowledgement, a soft expression of agreement. He promises it’ll get better. _You did good, cub,_ he says. _Nothing more we can do for them, now, with that wrinkled old fuck finally dead and my stupid shit-for-brains godson along with him._

“It wasn’t enough,” says Rey. “All those people died. All those years of the First Order, and then the battle in the sky, and. I didn’t want it to be like this.”

Chewbacca huffs. _Nobody ever did, cub,_ he replies. _All anybody can ever do is their best, as fucking shitty as that may feel, as hard as that is to accept, and that went for my-twins and my-Han, too, by the way. Nobody ever had it easy saving the galaxy. Focus on the good bits or the bad bits will eat you alive._

“I never wanted to do this alone,” Rey whispers. Even held against Chewbacca’s side, the absence of her Jedi Masters and Han feels raw and tangible.

Chewbacca looks at her, and Rey tilts her head up to meet his eyes. _You’re not alone,_ he says. _You never have been. My-twins are still here, in that Force you can feel— and my-Han lives on in all of us, that daft old fuck._ He makes an affectionate noise that might be a laugh. _You’ve got me, and you’ve got your-pilot and your-trooper and an entire galaxy you’ve yet to see, you tiny little desert-child. Everything ebbs and wanes, over time, I know that better than most. Things will get better. They always do._

Rey takes a shuddering breath and looks over the hangar bay, at the people in orange and tan who gave their lives to a fight that they almost lost, a cause that’s been picked up by generations upon generations before them. “Is that what everyone said after the Empire fell?”

Chewbacca rumbles affectionately, the aching loss of Luke and Leia and Han still a tangible weight on his voice. _After the Empire fell, everyone celebrated and got drunk, and held each other real fuckin’ close, and that just about means the same thing, doesn’t it? Worry about tomorrow in the morning. Victory is like this, cub— it’s not easy and it shouldn’t be but it still needs to be celebrated, we still need to heal. We have to learn how to keep the memory of those we lost alive somehow._

_*_

Rey has been watching Finn, and she knows he’s been dwelling on something, and she’s been watching Poe, and she knows he’s been talking to Finn about something, so she isn’t surprised at the next meeting of Resistance leaders when Finn announces that he wants to aid Jannah in storming old First Order education and training centres and rehabilitating stormtroopers, and Poe at his side nods empathetically, silently daring anyone else to object.

They’ve been receiving ships of trooper defectors practically since Exegol, and Finn has been spending every free minute down at the landing bay helping troopers find work and explaining free life to those who’ve never known the luxury of choice. He's good at it, of course he is— Finn is the kindest person Rey knows. 

All of that _knowing_ doesn’t stop the announcement from starting a wave of unease in her stomach. After the meeting, after the council’s approval has been easily gained, Finn reaches out and encircles Rey’s wrist loosely to keep her from slipping away. 

“Hey,” he says, still smiling.

Rey tries to return the expression. She sort of wants to bury herself in the engine of the Falcon and stay there forever because the thought of being separated from either of them—now, after fighting so hard— hurts so much Rey can hardly breathe. She never used to be like this, she never used to care this much— and she knows it's not a weakness to love but it _hurts_. 

“Sunshine, what’s wrong?” Poe comes up to her other side, and Rey feels trapped by them in the best and worst way.

“Nothing, it’s fine, I’m fine,” she says too insincerely. Poe’s growing frown mirrors Finn’s.

“Is this about what we said in the meeting?” Rey shakes her head rapidly.

“No, why?”

“Because,” says Finn anyway, “we thought maybe, maybe you’d want to come with?”

“Oh,” says Rey. The tension leaves her body so quickly it’s embarrassing.

“Yeah,” says Poe. He’s grinning at her, a spark of amusement in his eyes that tells Rey he’s laughing on the inside. She hits his shoulder with the flat of her palm and he laughs out loud instead. "How could we leave you?" He says it like it's unimaginable, and something in Rey's chest lodges back into place. 

“I mean, yes,” she says after a moment. “Yeah, I’ll—I’ll come with you.”

Finn smiles at her, as unapologetically bright as he always is. “Good,” he says definitively. “We wouldn’t want to go anywhere without you, anyway.”

*

Rey wakes screaming. Ben, in her mind, ripped away from her like a scab, and the darkness that came rushing up towards her so much louder than she could bear. She heads outside and relearns how to breathe, floating in the clearing Leia used to pace. 

Finn comes and finds her when the night air has grown darker but no less humid, sweat cooling on her skin as she stares up at the stars and tries to imagine that she can picture lives attached to the voices she heard in the blackness at Exegol.

He lowers himself down beside her, and she remembers Kylo Ren slicing his back open, remembers Finn calling for her over a raging sea and her _ignoring_ him. “Hey,” he says, once seated beside her.

Rey tilts to the side so she can rest her head on his shoulder. Finn’s head swivels so he can press a closed-mouth kiss to her forehead. “Hey,” he says again, softer but not fragile. Finn has always been like that—bold and kind at once. He is sunshine but not from the desert. “You okay? What’s going on?”

Rey shrugs. She isn’t sure how to explain the mass of writhing feeling within her, all this _emotion_ that she’s never needed to identify before.

Things were simpler on Jakku, before she knew her parents’ deaths and the way they cursed the blade that slew them, before she ever met a man who called himself Kylo and thought he deserved whatever he wanted, before she loved and lost Han and Luke and Leia, before she felt lightning crackle and splinter through her bones and felt lives dissolve under her fingertips as they joined into the fabric of the Force.

Finn hums. Hs presence is soothing, like it always is—whenever Finn is beside her Rey can feel him holding her hand, even when his hands are elsewhere. “What were you going to tell me, in the sand?”

Finn looks at her, surprised, and Rey meets his eyes for a moment. She knows, she’s always known, but she doesn’t know why Finn's secret-keeping bothered Poe so much, isn’t sure why his face flickers between sadness and fondness and jealousy sometimes when they reach for each other.

“Oh,” says Finn. “Um.” He straightens up, and reaches out, and a small blue rock tumbles through the air and into his palm.

Rey smiles. “Oh, Finn,” she says, and lets him put an arm over her shoulders, “when did you know?”

“I’m not sure. I think I always, in a way, felt it there—but Leia said, sometimes, that I reminded her of Luke, and sometimes when I dream I’m back in the snow with a ‘saber in my hand and nothing feels more right than that. Is it supposed to feel like that? Like it becomes easier to breathe, all of a sudden, and you're holding your heartbeat in your hands?”

“I don’t know,” says Rey. “That’s how it feels for me. Master Luke said there was a balance, but there was balance between Kylo and I, too, but it didn’t feel anything like that, didn’t feel anything like the balance between you and me.”

“Did you know I was force-sensitive?” Finn asks, and Rey shakes her head.

“Not in those words, but I could feel it, feel _you_.” She leans her head against his shoulder and his hand raises to brush some hair out of her eyes. “I thought maybe that was just how it feels to have friends, but I don’t feel like that with anyone else—just you and Poe. Like we’re linked.”

“Where you are, I am also,” Finn says. “Where you go, I go with. It’s how I know you died.”

Rey goes stiff. She pushes out of his embrace. “What?”

Finn meets her eyes evenly. “I felt it, Rey, all of this energy leaking out into the galaxy like blood from a wound, and you were so tired and then you were just _gone_. I felt it happen, and then I felt you come back.”

Rey stares at him. She feels a scraped raw and vulnerable, caught off guard when she shouldn’t have been, because Rey felt it when Finn woke up so of course the same would be true in reverse.

Finn reaches out and holds her hand in his, calloused fingers curling gently over her own.

“Ben brought me back,” Rey says after a long, long pause. “And then he died.”

Finn tugs at her hand and Rey lets herself be pulled back to his side, their shoulders pressed together. “Do you miss him?”

“No,” says Rey. “But it doesn’t feel right for him to be gone.” She shakes her head; no, that came out wrong. “I just mean—he was always there, and then he wasn’t? And I don’t need him here and I never wanted him here but it’s _new_ and it’s just different, is all. He wasn't really Kylo at the end.”

“He should never have been in your head the way he was,” says Finn. “I know you were connected, I know Palpatine used that connection, but we’re connected too, Rey, and I’ve never once made your head my home, nor have you ever made me fear your power. Your mind belongs to you and you alone.”

Rey swallows hard around the lump in her throat. “He said I was nothing,” she tells Finn. “He said he was the only one who could or would ever love me.”

Finn raises his hand to Rey’s cheek, tilting her head towards him so he can bestow a kiss to her forehead, and then to each of her cheeks, and then to the scars on her fisted hands. “Well he was wrong,” he tells her. “You don’t need to feel guilty for what happened to him. You don’t owe him anything, and nothing of yours is his. Kylo made all his choices on his own, just as we all do.”

Rey leans against him, and listens to him breathe and feels his steadily glowing warmth in the Force, and she feels a weight lift off of her shoulders, as if two heavy hands have finally been pushed away.

“I’ve been wondering about the others out there,” she says after a long moment. “Like us, I mean. Force-sensitive. And I think, maybe—” She pauses and looks at him, to see his patient expression, attentive and supportive already, “not that I want to start a new Jedi order because I _don’t_ and I wouldn’t even know _how_ , but. I think, maybe, I’d like for people to know that if—if they want to, there is a place for them. Where they can learn to understand the Force.”

Finn nods. “I think it’s a good idea,” he says, nudging her shoulder.

“I don’t want anyone to fear the Force when they don’t have to,” Rey says. No more Anakins, no more Kylos. No more children hearing whispers in the dark which they can’t understand. “I don’t want to be like Luke, or Leia, or who came before them, but—I think, maybe, I’d like to teach people the best I can and let them know they’re not alone.”

Finn squeezes her shoulder. “Yeah, I think you'd be great at that, you should do it,” he agrees easily, like there was never any other response he would give other than his unwavering love, and maybe there wasn’t.

Poe finds them later on, still in the same spot. He lowers himself down onto the ground, his knees bent in front of them, and eyes them both carefully, searching for something in their expressions. “All good?” He asks, and Rey can feel the way Finn swallows and the way his adrenaline spikes.

“Yeah,” Finn says. “Rey wants to find force-sensitive people and help them, and I was just telling Rey what I didn’t get the chance to, um, before.”

Poe’s expression shutters for just a second, and his voice is too casual when he asks, “Oh?”

Finn nods jerkily. Rey pushes away from him so she can look him in the eyes and tell him to stop freaking out, but Finn is moving quicker than her and she barely has time to blink before he’s taking a deep breath and straightening his back. “I’m force sensitive,” he says, all in a rush.

Poe blinks. “What?”

Finn nods, and Rey pulls one of his hands closer to her so she can uncurl his fingers and trace lines on his palm. _Calm down,_ she thinks towards him, unsure as to why he’s so nervous. Poe loves him, doesn’t he know nothing could change that? (And with that revelation something clicks, and Rey thinks, _oh,_ and decides she needs to share a secret of her own.)

Poe’s brow crinkles with his bemusement. “Is that—is that what you wanted to say in the quicksand?” Finn nods again. “Finn, buddy, that’s great!”

“It is?” Finn asks, confused and relieved, and Rey and Poe exchange glances.

“Yeah,” says Poe genuinely, coming closer so he can press his shoulder against Finn’s. “Why did you think it wasn’t? You've fought with a lightsaber before.”

“It’s not _that_ ,” says Finn. “It’s just. I mean. Kylo _hurt_ you, Poe, with the Force, and I didn’t want you to think _I_ could hurt you, or give you any reason not to trust me.”

Poe reaches up and touches Finn’s jaw. “Finn, buddy,” he says, and his voice is somehow reverent and fond at the same time. “Finn. C’mon. I know you’d never hurt me. I know it. I’m not scared of you.”

“Oh,” exhales Finn, closing his eyes, and he touches his forehead to Poe’s. “Okay. Then yeah, uh, I’m force sensitive, and it’s—really cool.”

Poe huffs a laugh and Finn grins, wide and white-toothed, and Rey feels everything bubbling up in her chest and slipping through the gaps in her ribs, expanding love and fear and loneliness bursting into the world.

“Palpatine called me his,” says Rey. “A granddaughter. An heir to the Sith. Child of the dark.”  
  
“Fuck that,” says Poe, turning to her. His long-lashed eyes are dark and familiar.  
  
“We make our own family and choose our own names,” says Finn, who was once a number. “You are what you choose to be— not what Kylo wanted, not what Palpatine expected.”  
  
“Fuck them both to hell,” says Poe. He reaches over and grabs Rey and Finn’s hands, tan and dark and brown skin, calloused and warm. “You're ours and we're yours. You're you and you're for the Resistance. Anyone else who tries to claim you can get fucked.”  
  
“I love you,” says Rey like revelation. She loves them. She _loves_.  
  
“Isn’t that what I just said?” Poe replies, eyes crinkling. He jostles her shoulder, smiling like a sunbeam.  
  
Finn presses a sloppy kiss to her cheek. His presence in the force is combusting into happy stars. “We love you too,” he tells her. “Choose whatever name you want, we won't mind, but don't choose it because some Sith told you it was yours.”

Rey leans towards him and rests her head on his shoulder, Poe at her side and still holding her hand.

  
  
The silence between the three of them is warm and for the first time since Exegol it doesn’t hurt. “Rey,” says Poe. “Move in with us.”  
  
“Yeah, alright,” says Rey. She curls her fingers around Poe’s, her elbow hooked through Finn’s, and she smiles, and she’s so glad she has them.

  
*

That night Rey dreams again. Voices call to her— harsh, choking whispers that scream for her to return to a birthright she won't claim. Ben Solo says nothing but the darkness shows him flying off a cliff and she knows he is there. Watching her, maybe, or caught in the space between the dark and the light just as she feared she would be.

Rey snarls at the shadows. “Leave me be,” she screams to the void. “You are dead and I am alive. I am Rey of the Resistance, Rey of the Jedi. You are nothing to me and I am my _own_!”

The Sith howl and rise up, growing, stretching above and around her, their shapes undistinguishable and expanding.

Someone takes Rey's hand. A man, with light in his palm— bearded, with kind eyes. At his other side, Rey sees a younger man, this one with curls and a familiar jaw and a scar slashed through his face.

The younger man steps forward and with his mind he _pushes_ , and says aloud: "Back to the dark with all of you, piss off, you're dead and you can't have her.” His voice booms, and the shadows cringe away from him, and Rey can feel the strength of his presence in the Force even from wherever they are. 

He turns to her, then, and Rey knows his name. 

"Thank you," says the man. "For finishing what I started." His lips quirk. "You understood balance better than most of us, in the end. You did well." 

"The bar was admittedly low," adds the bearded man, who she knows is called _Obi-Wan,_ smiling at her lopsidedly. "We are with you, Rey, always." She can see them now, wavering into visibility- a man with clouded eyes, a woman with stripes, a robed man with a braid holding his hair back, so many more. All the voices who urged her up off the ground at Exegol, given forms and life. She knows their names and she knows their stories and she was never alone at all, not really. Somewhere in the distance, she hears Ben say _thank you._

A hand falls on her shoulder and as Rey turns to greet the unknown, the other Jedi fade. Anakin and Obi-Wan both fade away, their smiles lingering, but Rey forgets about them as soon as she sees who stands before her.

Leia, Luke at her side, and they smile as if to say hello. For a second, their image wavers, and Rey sees them younger, with smooth faces and lighter hair, but the image fades and her teachers stand before her in the age she knew them as. "Darling, we are so _proud_ ," Leia says. Her voice is as it always was; wry and gentle all at once. 

Rey tumbles into Leia's arms, Luke's hand landing softly on her back.

"I miss you," she whispers, squeezing her eyes shut and gripping the back of Leia’s robes, breathing for the first time.

"Oh, Rey, I know," sighs Leia. "Dear one, life is hard like that. But Obi-Wan was right, and we are with you. All of us. You are not alone in the Force, and you never will be."

Rey pulls back, sniffing. Her cheeks are wet when she scrubs at them with the back of her hand. For once, the voice of the desert in her mind does not remind her to conserve water. Luke's hand cradles her face for a moment and Rey takes a breath. "How will I know if what I'm doing is the right thing?"

Luke shrugs. "Oh, you'll never know, not really. Don't overthink it. Trust yourself and your instincts and the force." He smiles at her, his eyes crinkling. Rey's breath catches and she nods. 

“Keep your loved ones close," Leia adds, "As we also will be close to you. You don't need us to guide you, not anymore. You restored the balance and you gave me back my son. You’ve made us all so proud, Rey." 

Rey pulls the Skywalkers into her arms, an elbow hooking each of them close. Her eyes are stinging but she’s smiling. 

Luke's chuckle rumbles against her chest. Leia presses a kiss to the side of her head. A warm hand lands between her shoulder blades. "Don't break my ship," says Han, voice as gruff as she remembers. "Watch after Chewie for us. You done good, kid. It's okay to rest." 

*

Rey wakes up. An arm is sprawled loosely over her waist, and a hand is gripping onto that forearm. Finn sleeps on his stomach, and his head is resting by Rey's shoulder, cheek to her skin. Poe is on his side, attached to Finn even with Rey in between them, his face buried in her open hair. 

Finn blinks blearily at Rey, squinting a bit in the dark, brows furrowed only slightly. Poe shifts and raises his head to look at her, sleep-addled and with a pillow imprint on his cheek. Their silent queries match their twin expressions of gentle worry.

“Go back to sleep,” says Rey. “It’s okay. I'm not going anywhere.” Finn's arm squeezes her waist and Poe shuffles closer to her side, his hand clasping back to Finn’s forearm, and Rey closes her eyes.

She goes back to sleep. 

*

The day that they leave is a bright one, where the sky is shining so brightly that Rey has to raise a hand over her eyes to see clearly. Her arms can still feel Rose's tight hug. She can hear Chewbacca and BB8 arguing. 

“Where to first?” Poe asks, beside Rey in the cockpit with Finn standing behind them, his hand placed on the back of Poe’s seat. Their faces glow gold under the sun and Rey’s heart sings the name of the galaxy.

“Tatooine,” says Rey. “There’s something I need to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> some things:  
> \- rose tico gets a girlfriend (zorii) and spearheads the resistance efforts while finn and poe are being gays in space (i'm just shit at writing her so she got neglected i'm so sorry rose)  
> \- chewie comes with the trio into space because he's their dad. no i won't elaborate  
> \- i just realised i barely mention bb8 this whole time?????? wtf thats my baby  
> \- much to my regret I actually kinda liked how they did kylo's redemption but he didn't deserve one and I stand by that. dying doesn't make him a hero,, yikes
> 
> anyway ! I hope y'all liked that and if u did!!! please review friends i thrive off of any acknowledgement :))


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